


Through Gold and Gloom

by chronicAngel



Series: Through All Things [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Marriage, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-01-25 20:04:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18581629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: "I just want her to have a perfect wedding," he sighs, hoping nobody calls him out for the sappiness of it."As long as she's marrying you, it'll feel perfect. I suppose you'll just have to make your best man fight off any potential suitors who have come to your wedding to steal your bride away 16th century style."





	Through Gold and Gloom

It's an hour before her wedding ceremony and Jade Harley has never wanted a drink before but God does she want one right now.

If her grandfather were still alive she thinks he'd have given her a glass of whiskey to steel her nerves and some speech about how proud he was of her for finally reaching this day. As it stands, the man died in a hunting accident eighteen years ago and she is stuck simply sitting still on the verge of tears while Kanaya pulls her mess of curls into something resembling an up-do and Rose frantically runs between the room where she is getting ready and the room where Dave is getting ready trying to make sure that everything is set for them to get married and _holy shit, she's getting married._

"Are you alright? You look like you're... panicking, a little bit," Kanaya says when she steps in front of her to check her work only to see the tears beading up in the corners of Jade's eyes. She doesn't know how to explain that her answer is both _I've never felt better in my life_ and _I'd rather throw myself out that window than walk out that door._ She's so, so excited to marry Dave, but at the same time every time she thinks about just what they are all here to do she just wants to burst into tears because it's all just a little too much to think about right now.

"Obviously she's overwhelmed," Nepeta says with a dismissive wave of her hand, and she wonders if that's all it is. _Am I just overwhelmed? Is there just too much happening? Do I just need to take a step away from my thoughts and take a deep breath and then I'll feel better? Or what if I'm having second thoughts about this and I don't actually want to marry Dave? Is that even possible after everything?_ It's the last thing that leads her to scold herself because she has never wanted basically anything more than she wants to marry Dave Strider today. "Wouldn't you be?"

Finally she lets out a sob and buries her face in her hands and _she's gonna mess up her make-up and Roxy's gonna have to completely redo it and she's gonna be so mad._

Rose slides into the room right after that and freezes, eyes going wide. She looks almost as panicked as Jade does. "Woah, woah, why is the bride crying? You're not having doubts about this, are you?" Jade sniffles and shakes her head, rubbing at her eyes. She swears she can actually _feel_ her eyeliner smearing across her skin. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

She doesn't know how to voice her anxieties in a way that doesn't sound totally childish and dumb. She doesn't really know how to voice her anxieties at all, actually. "What if he decides he doesn't wanna marry me?" She eventually whispers, which she supposes _is_ a concern but she doesn't think it's what's really wrong.

"Jade, he's been with you for six years. He plotted with my brother for three months on how to properly propose to you in a way that would, 'Make her heart melt, but not stress her out, you know?' He gushed in my DMs at three in the morning my time just three weeks ago because he woke up and you were cuddled up to him and he was debating calling into work because you were too cute to get out of bed. He's not going to change his mind about this," Nepeta tries to reassure.

She shakes her head and sobs again. "But he's too _good._ What if I'm locking him down for the rest of his life when he could be with somebody ten times as good as me?" And _that,_ she suspects, is much closer to her actual insecurity. She has worried several times in the six years that she has been with Dave that he would regret choosing her of all the people he could have been with.

This time it is Rose who speaks up, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Are you actually stupid?" She snaps, and Jade looks up in surprise in time to catch the scolding look Kanaya sends her way. "No, she needs to hear it. I'm his _twin sister,_ so I like to think I know him pretty well. And I remember when we were _fourteen years old_ and he told me about how he'd just met John's little sister and he wasn't sure he'd ever seen someone so beautiful. He actually waxed poetic about how green your eyes were for a minute. I was almost proud. He used to call me at four in the morning my time when you two were in college because you were crying over how you were going to get a bad grade on your paper and you'd be forced to drop out of college and you couldn't live with the shame, and he was trying to proofread your papers for you but he couldn't understand a word of it because _you were too smart for him._ And he said that so many times that I would have punched him if I could have reached Texas from New York with some sort of mutant noodle arms.

"I think in Dave's mind, you're the most beautiful, intelligent, talented person in the entire world. Since we were 19, he's spent almost every day finding new ways to tell me about how in love with you he is. He's not going to change his mind, Jade."

She stares with wide eyes at Rose.

She remembers that day when she met Dave. He and John had been best friends since they were twelve, but she always hid out in her room when John had friends over or else was at her own friends' houses (Nepeta, in particular, was a frequent host when she felt too overwhelmed to deal with teenage boys). She had been getting ready to leave, and they'd been playing video games in the living room, and as she walked out of her room the two of them made eye contact and she felt her heart stutter in her chest. Foolishly, she'd thought to herself, _I wanna marry that boy some day._ And now, terrifyingly and amusingly, she really is.

* * *

It's an hour before his wedding ceremony and Dave Strider has never been so horrified by the idea of drinking.

"Dude, you're freaking out, just have one glass," Terezi says, holding out a glass to him again, and he swears to God if she offers him alcohol one more time he is going to take it and throw the thing across the room and he'll just deal with the consequences later. John, for his part, holds up a hand as though to silently signal to Terezi that she should stop, except she's completely blind so that's actually pretty fucking useless, Egbert. Still, a valiant effort. Karkat, apparently the only useful person in his entire wedding party, takes the glass from her hand, sets it on the nearest table, and rests his hands on her shoulders.

"I don't want a drink. I just need some fresh air or somethin'," he dismisses, though he knows this is not wholly accurate. Still, John immediately scoots over to the one window in the room that he is meant to be getting ready in and slides it open, and Dave promptly sticks his head out the thing and takes deep breaths of the cold air. It's surprisingly chilly for April, which kind of sucks since their actual wedding ceremony will be taking place in the garden outside, but it's great for right now.

"Are you... having doubts?" John asks, slowly, and Dave immediately snaps his head up to glare at him because _what the fuck, no, of course he's not having doubts._ John holds his hands up as though in surrender. "Okay, okay. Yeah, that was stupid. But... okay, I can't fix your problem unless you tell me what it is." _Pretty sure you can't fix my problem either way._

There's a knock at the door and he straightens anxiously so fast he hits his head against the fucking window frame and he's rubbing the back of his head when Karkat says everybody's decent (technically Terezi says it first, little asshole that she is, but the door doesn't open until Karkat says it) and Rose slides into the room. "Little brother, what are you getting up to in here?" He wants to point out that not only are they twins, but he's the older twin, _and_ he's almost an entire damn foot taller than her. Instead he just huffs and bends over to show her the top of his head without answering.

"Your wife is basically having a panic attack in the other room," she says in a tone like she is letting him in on a secret he isn't supposed to know about. _Oh God, is **she** having doubts?_ "She says she's worried you're going to realize you could get better."

"That's ridiculous," he scoffs immediately. "Jade's the best it gets." And yet, he can still understand the anxiety. After all, he worries the same thing when it comes to her almost every day that they're together even though she has never shown any signs of regret or, in fact, anything other than love and affection for him in the years that they have been together. It can just be hard to believe that someone so amazing would choose you, and though he disagrees with her opinion on the matter on several grounds, he supposes he can see where she would be anxious about it.

"I told her you think that and she's breathing easier now, but I suspect she's still a little panicked about it." She hums after a moment and pushes him away to stand straight again. He rubs at his head and pouts even as she says, "No blood, no bump. Mom would have offered you a shot and then sent you off to play." Then she adds, "So, tell me what _you're_ panicking about."

"I'm not panicking," he dismisses, glaring.

She just gives him a skeptical look, crossing her arms over her chest and raising a brow at him. It feels like she is staring deep into his soul with a challenging look. _I'm starting to think that "twins are psychic" theory people have is true, and it's pretty fuckin' one-sided._ "I'm just nervous that this is gonna go wrong somehow, I guess. I dunno how I'd even do it but what if I fuck it up?"

"Like you'll forget your vows or something?" She offers, and he stares at her in horror for a second because _fuck, he didn't even think of that._ He and Jade opted to write their own vows and he already struggled so much with just that. He ended up completely rewriting them four times before today, which is impressive being that he only proposed to her like five months ago. (140 days ago, actually, not that he's been counting down to this or anything.)

He's already scrambling to find a napkin or something now to write them down on again just to double check he has them memorized before she stops him with a cool hand on his shoulder. "Dave." He swallows and slowly turns to be facing her again. The groomsmen around him are all conveniently quiet for once in their lives. "Calm down. You're not going to ruin it. Even if you're a stuttering mess through improvised vows because you forgot what you actually wrote, Jade is still going to be in love with you and you're still going to be in love with her. That's all that matters." Then, after a moment, she adds, "Plus, it'll be more like the two of you that way."

He takes a shuddering deep breath and runs a hand through his hair. He'd be nervous about messing it up, except it's not like he's actually done that much with his hair for his wedding other than brushing it out for once. He just got a haircut for it a few days ago, but like every other haircut he's had in his life, it's not that easy to mess up. (Jade likes to run her hands through his hair when they're cuddling, though, and she somehow always manages to make it a total mess.) "I just want her to have a perfect wedding," he sighs, hoping nobody calls him out for the sappiness of it.

"As long as she's marrying you, it'll feel perfect. I suppose you'll just have to make your best man fight off any potential suitors who have come to your wedding to steal your bride away 16th century style." He laughs a little, his expression soft. Rose moves her hand from his shoulder to his cheek and he's so much taller than her it's almost comical. (Somehow, Jade is still shorter than her. He thinks it's sort of endearing, though.) "Your wedding _is_ going to be perfect, Dave. You'll get up there and she'll come out and you'll see."

Dave is generally pretty anti-taking people's word for it (even Rose, who is right most of the time anyway, not that he would ever tell her that because it would go straight to her head), but he chooses just this once to believe that without asking for further proof.

* * *

Roxy finishes up her make-up again and grins at her. "You're so pretty," she says, cupping her cheeks to tilt her head at several angles to examine her work and then giving a satisfied little nod. Then she kisses her forehead right at the hairline, a dangerous game of lipstick versus very delicately done hair and make-up, and adds, "I wonder if Dave's gonna cry more or less than me when you're walking down that aisle." _I don't think either of you can possibly cry more than I'm going to,_ she thinks, but she just laughs a little bit, breathy and wet as she almost starts to tear up again, though this time with happiness more than nerves. Just like she was hoping she would be crying on her wedding day. (Or rather, her preference if she absolutely _has_ to cry on her wedding day.)

"It's a good thing that we've got waterproof mascara on, huh?" She says, sniffing, and Roxy laughs and nods a bit, hugging her one last time before going out to join the steadily growing crowd of people that are pushing to make sure everything is going smoothly and people are all about ready to head outside for the ceremony proper. Jade feels her nerves surge again at the thought that she's getting married in _fifteen minutes_ but tries to tamp it down.

"The clouds are starting to clear up," Nepeta says from where she sits staring out the one window in the room. Jade walks over, careful not to trip over herself (she knew high heels were a bad idea when she's so clumsy), and then looks out.

She's right. The sun is starting to shine directly on the gazebo they're getting married in, and through the window she can see the very first people beginning to head outside and find seats along the little aisle down the middle that she's going to be walking down in practically no time at all. She and Dave had been worried it might be cold on their wedding day even though she'd wanted more than anything to do it outside. She smiles softly.

There's a knock on the door, and Kanaya steps inside. There's no Rose in sight which must mean that she's either still dealing with something with the boys (she wonders what they could possibly be struggling with that they're still holding her maid of honor hostage and she hopes it's nothing serious) or else is the one corralling people outside with Roxy. _Can you corral something outside?_ She wonders.

"I have been told to give you a ten minute warning." She says it delicately, like she's worried it might set her off, and instead she just nods a little bit while her stomach does a little flip flop. There's only ten minutes before she's married. Ten minutes before she is supposed to make a commitment that will last the rest of her life. She is both excited and terrified. It feels stupid, since she basically already decided she was going to make this commitment when she was seventeen (and really, she made that commitment when she was eleven and saw him playing video games on her couch, but that wasn't _real_ like the rest of this is-- like the rest of this has been for a long while now).

She continues to simply stare out the window as the people continue to go outside for the next eight minutes before there's another soft knock on the door and Rose enters the room, leading her uncle Jude behind her.

Jade looks over her shoulder at the both of them. Rose, for all of her wise words today, looks like she might be just as panicked as Jade was earlier (if she does hide it a little better). She has her hands folded and she's clenching her own fingers so tightly her knuckles are white. The part of Jade that always latches onto other peoples' negative emotions wants to panic and ask what's wrong. The part of her that knows she needs to walk down the aisle takes a deep breath and hooks her arm with her uncle's.

* * *

She walks down the aisle to Allegretto, which Dave knows as "That One Classical Song From X-Men: Apocalypse," but he can't even laugh about it because he's too busy just staring at her. _God, she's so beautiful._

He's always thought the tradition that the groom isn't allowed to see the bride in her wedding dress until their wedding day was stupid, but now it is their wedding day and it's his first time seeing her in the dress and he wonders if the photographer will be able to capture just how enamored by her he is right now. How enamored by her he will be for the rest of their lives. (It is most striking because she is wearing a dress of white and gold and her hair is in an elaborate braid spiraling around a bun atop her head and she's wearing more makeup than she's probably ever worn before yet he thinks she looks just as lovely now as when she wakes up in the morning and her hair is a mess and there's a little bit of dried drool on her mouth and her eyes are all bleary and she's wearing only one of his t-shirts. The difference is everyone else would agree right now.)

He wants to take off his shades to see her better and curses his albinism because even though they're under the shade of a gazebo in her favorite little garden to help protect his skin, the sun is still too bright for his photosensitive eyes. (And, on a level, he still has a childish insecurity about all of the guests at his wedding seeing their unnatural pigment.) Still, it's not so dark through the lenses that he can't see her at all. He can even make out some of the detail work on her skirt, though he's sure once they're in the hotel room for their honeymoon and it's dark enough that he can take them off he'll be able to see it much better for as long as she's still wearing it.

All of the bridesmaids and groomsmen are lined up alongside him, with the girls behind the empty spot that she will be filling once she reaches the end of the aisle and his party lined up behind him. John is his best man and is thus positioned closest to him (after all, her wedding ring is in his pocket for when Dave is to slide it onto her finger) and he thinks he can _hear_ his best man tearing up, which he's so going to make fun of him for later. (And so what if Dave is tearing up a little bit, too, it's not like anybody else can see that.) 

When she reaches the end of the aisle, he can't even focus on what the officiant is saying to the two of them because everything in the world other than her is so completely unimportant when she's standing across from him at their wedding.

He only knows it's his time to say his vows when the white noise disappears and he blinks in surprise but it's fine because nobody can see his eyes. He feels like it's been hours that they've been up here, but he knows that it's only been minutes. Still, it feels like even more hours pass where he's just staring at her and her beautiful smile before he's finally able to open his mouth and speak.

"Jade," he starts, and it already feels so incredibly cheesy. "The day that I saw you for the first time when I was thirteen years old, I knew that you were the prettiest girl in the entire world." She laughs a little. It's silent, but he can see it in the way her smile grows and her eyes squeeze shut. "You weren't model pretty or actress pretty like the other guys my age were always talking about at lunch. You were _real person_ pretty, which I think is a much harder standard to meet.

"Still, when I think of that day, it feels totally superficial. I could have talked for hours about how pretty your eyes were or how I wouldn't mind getting my fingers tangled up in your curls. Actually, if you ask Rose, I probably _did_ talk for hours about those things." He pauses for a moment to let the people seated around them give a collective chuckle. "But I don't think that was the day I fell in love with you. How could it have been? I didn't even know how smart or kind or funny you were yet. I didn't know about the way your eyes light up any time you see someone walking their dog in public, or about how actually terrible you are at making coffee, or about how you love gardening so much you sneak hanging potted plants into our apartment when I'm at work like I won't notice the flowers when I get home."

She brings up a hand to her face to wipe at her tears quickly, as though if she moves fast enough nobody will see that she did it. He's always hated seeing her cry, but this one time, he supposes it's okay. "It's crazy to think we've been together for six years now. Six years of putting up with my rap. Six years of trying to understand a word that comes out of your mouth when you tell me about your papers or about how work was. Six years of taking turns making little choices like what we should have for dinner or what music we should play in the car.

"Vows are supposed to be promises. It was hard to think of what I could promise you that would be good enough. You deserve the world, and I can't give you that. But, I promise to try. I promise to spend every day of the rest of my life showing you the world. I promise to run out to get you coffee every morning because you can't make a cup to save your life. I promise to walk your hellbeast when you're too tired, and to walk the fifteen other hellbeasts you'll adopt over the course of the rest of our lives.

"I promise to love you. And I promise to tell you every single day, until we're old and grey and we're still being all mushy in public and embarrassing our grandkids. I love you. I can't wait to be married."

* * *

She's crying. It's embarrassing and she told herself that she wouldn't do this but even when she first said it she knew she was lying to herself and God, how can she _not_ when he just listed every reason she's been in love with him for years in one go?

She can only take solace in the fact that she's not the only one crying. She can hear Nepeta sniffing behind her, trying not to cry dramatically and draw attention away from their wedding, and can see John's goofy face he makes when he's holding back tears, and when she looks out after his vows are done at all of the people watching them she can see her uncle nodding his approval and wiping at the tears streaming down his cheeks. She supposes her whole family has always been full of criers.

She only has time for one shaky deep breath and to turn back to look at Dave before she is being told to say her own vows.

"Even as I was writing my vows, I knew that I wouldn't be able to put everything that I felt for you and everything that I wanted to say to you properly into words. I almost commissioned Rose to write them for me just because I knew it would come out better but then I was scared that if I didn't write them myself I wouldn't be able to remember them and I'd come up here and just look like an idiot." She laughs a little at herself and their friends and family laugh a little bit with her. She's hardly twenty seconds into her vows and she's already got tears running down her face.

"So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I decided right away that I wanted to keep these short." She swallows. Her stomach twists with nerves. That was basically just the disclaimer-- the content warning before the real show-- and now she has to say her _real_ vows and his were so beautiful and she knows that she's going to mess it up somehow and-- alright, Jade, stop. Deep breaths.

She lets out a shaky breath and starts again after a pause that probably lasted much shorter in the real world than it felt like in her head. "I can actually remember the moment that I realized that I loved you. I mean, _really_ loved you and not just the 'I'm gonna marry him some day' crush of an eleven-year-old girl on her older brother's best friend.

"I was in college, and you'd just graduated a few months earlier. It was four in the morning and I'd just wrapped up a paper that was supposed to be turned in nine hours later and I had class in three and a half hours so I knew I couldn't get any real amount of sleep but I still wanted to lay down with you. To just be in bed with you. And I felt so ridiculous, like if I was going to be in bed then I should at least _try_ to sleep. But I crawled into bed and you rolled over in your sleep and slung your arm over me and you smooshed your cheek against my shoulder and I thought, 'I could lay like this with him forever.' And now, in a way, I'm going to.

"I've been a notoriously heavy sleeper my whole life and yet I just stayed awake watching you. And I felt a little creepy about it, yeah." She laughs again, wiping at her eyes. "But then you woke up, and you asked me how long I'd been in bed. And I told you that it hadn't been very long, maybe an hour. And you _apologized_ for not waking up sooner, and you always stayed up so late back then-- you still do if I let you-- so you couldn't have had more than five hours of sleep. But you stayed up for the rest of the night to talk to me about... all sorts of nonsense, really. You told me about this recurring dream you used to have of a giant purple city with a tower in the center, and when you looked up you could see the stars. And I remember, you told me you wished you could show me. And I just thought of how desperate I was to see it with you.

"You've shown me so many things since then. I'm sure you'll show me so many more. So, I promise to see the world with you." They hadn't discussed what was going in their vows before the wedding. How perfectly they go together makes her want to cry harder, but she has to at least stay composed until she's finished. "I promise to make you go to sleep before one in the morning. I promise to climb into bed with you every night even when neither of us are gonna get any sleep. I promise to have late night talks with you and remember what you said four years later even though you'll surely have forgotten by then. I promise to spend every night with you, and to cherish those nights forever, as your wife." And in just a few moments, they'll begin their first night as husband and wife. The first night to cherish.

**Author's Note:**

> This ended up coming out much later than I expected but I'm so glad it's finally done.
> 
> P.S. Rose is the most exhausted bridesmaid ever and I may or may not have been projecting a little bit.
> 
> P.P.S. Jude is John and Jade's uncle for the purposes of this AU because relationships were complicated to work out, okay?


End file.
